The Anti-Manichaeist

For Iraq Shiites, Faith knows no boundaries

The influence of shiite Sadr is unlikely to be undercut by supporting shiite “moderate” Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The reason is that there is a solidarity of sorts among shiites and Sadr has a staying power on account of the fact that his father was a prominent recent shiite martyr under Saddam’s regime. Martyrdom confers much stature among shiites, since they trace their roots back to 661, when the Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali was killed in a power-struggle after Muhammed’s death.

There is going to be an important relationship between mosque and state in Iraq, one way or the other. How the US may go about ensuring some autonomy of state from mosque to help the state adjudicate fairly the differences between the many different religious/ethnic groups in Iraq is going to require more knowledge and a sense of Iraq’s history than the neo-conservatives in the BushAdmin have been willing to learn up to this point.

dlw